Men in the kitchen and when they were done, the dishwasher was running and the counters were clean.
We have had some = no, a lot of trouble keeping our dogs home. We finally gave up and hired a fencing company to do it for us.
Category Archive: Garden
Spring chicks, plants, bees
For you who are watching the health series, tonight is #3.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKCn_-LAChQ
The transplants are now in their new temporary pots. They will again get transplanted when the weather is warm enough. The peas haven’t come up, so will have to plant those again along with starting more seeds. Why is it so difficult to plant just the right number of seeds. If I plant just a few, they don’t come up, if I plants many, it seems most of them come up.
The little Polish caps are really getting cute
Can you see how much the babies have grown? The chicks have feathers now and one of them insists on hopping up to the side of the container and over to the great outside world. They have been moved to another room and tomorrow will get screening over the top.
They have grown enough I have separated them into 3 containers and soon will have to be 4. Then they will graduate to the chicken coop to get acquainted with the adults. Yes, I’ll have to put chicken wire around them to protect them until they get bigger, but I’ll love having them out of the house.
It’s a good thing I take these photos as I go through my day. Otherwise, by the time I get to the end, I forget where I started. Today it was with the beehives. 2 of the 3 hives didn’t make it through the winter. I have talked to other beekeepers and it seems that about 3/4 of the bees this year didn’t make it. They are blaming it on the poor blackberry crop. The bees didn’t get enough put away for the winter. When I opened the two hives, there was no honey left in them and very few dead bees. So apparently that’s what happened. I don’t know, maybe when they run out of food, they go searching even though it is too cold.
Big and little accomplishments
First if you are at all interested in health, I want to recommend this series of free videos by Dr. Youngberg. This is a series of 12 he is recording and making available. Tonight’s lecture is on exercise and diet and how it will optimize your health and turn on good genes and off bad genes. It is available for the week. We enjoyed the first lecture and encourage you to upload and listen to them.
Today has been a day of cleaning up little projects and working a new big project. At least that is what I wrote at the start of my day. I was going to do some major yard work, plant a number of starts in little pots, and a couple other little jobs. Some jobs have a way of taking more time than they should. So the day really went like this:
Small job (hahaha) Clean wheels on one chair. Take all the threads out of wheels which hadn’t been done for about 15 months.
There is a bit of accumulation here. Have you ever had to do this? Here I am removing bunches of threads and lint.
Finally done with one wheel and here is the pile of lint from ONE WHEEL.
This job is taking way to long so after three wheels I hemmed this pair of jeans and this really was a small job.
Back to the wheels, all done (after 3 hours), cleaned and oiled.
And here is how much thread and whatever a chair with 5 wheels can hold.
Now off to remove 3 Barbary plants, moss, and weeds. This was the expected big task and DH dug them out for me and then cleaned my trimming mess when I was done. It took about the same amount of time as the one chair! The Barbary are the red plants and just full of thorns.
And you can see in this photo the ground cover is also out of control.
It does seem that I get a larger mess before getting done. What about you?
And now this area is cleaned, I just have to get a few plants to replace what we’ve removed . I’d also like to take out those yellow-green plants in the upper right back. They are a bush dogwood that I need to keep trimming. They sprawl much more than I like.
As a break while working on this project, I did some walking on the back deck. Look at these funny chickens, who started following me (hoping for food). As soon as I turned to look at them, they got this “who me” pose.
(small job) I also got these steps worked on. They are under the cedar tree and when the cedar sheds, it makes the steps very slippery. They are now cleaned up
And this is the raspberry patch. In the past, I have always trimmed them back every year. I was talked into leaving them, without trimming. With the looks of these, I think I’ll go back to trimming.
And that is how the day really went. Please tell me you have days like this as well. I have lots of them.
Long walk today
It was just beautiful and after making pizza from scratch with several different toppings, DH, DD, DSIL and I went to the river to walk. However, since my photos won’t upload, we will discuss this plant from yesterday. It smells like licorice and has an unpleasant taste, so whatever it is, it will be pulled.
And isn’t this a cute little starter greenhouse, Zach, our son-in-law, is going to use. It is just paper cups in a zipper bag like sheets come in. I’m thinking this is a very clever way to get a few plants started. It’s really inexpensive as well.
Garden day
It was a beautiful morning, which started out chilly, so we started in the greenhouse, and this is what I found.
Did you find him?
Here are closer photos. He really is tiny, only about 1 1/2″ long
Do you think he is responsible for these holes and tunnels under the beds?
Wednesday, I purchased some starter plants and planted today (Purchased because I didn’t start soon enough and wanted some greens to eat)
Here you see this side nearly all planted. The celery is from last year when we cut off the celery, but left the root. The new plants are at the end of the celery row.
These plants in the center are hold overs from last year as well. Is it possible to kill Swiss chard? This plant produced all winter long and the chickens have enjoyed a lot of it. I was thinking of just pulling the rest out, but I may transplant it to near their yard so they can continue to munch on it. They may actually overeat it and it will give up.
This is mostly an overall view of the greenhouse with most of the kale to my left and the celery and new plants are what you see to the right.
And the kale is still going strong, though I will start new plants this year.
This is one of the mystery plants, but I am now thinking it is a type of parsley.
Here is the other mystery plant. I believe it to be some type of herb. I’m showing it with the leaves where it is starting to flower as well.
In addition we planted about 4 feet of sugar pea pods in the outside garden and will replant in about 2 weeks to make the harvest longer (and in case they don’t come up) Sometimes our peas get flooded out. Being an optimist, I’m hoping for better this year.
And we planted some sweet peas for a bit of color. I remember my father’s mother and my mother always had sweet peas among other flowers in their gardens. Next I want to get some red potatoes going.
Are you putting in a garden and if so, what are you planting this year? Yes add answer in the comments, I’d love to know.
Greenhouse Springtime planting
LOOK! The banana trees I feared were frozen are returning! See the little shoots. I have 4 pots that I replanted last year from the tree I had and they all are sending up new shoots. Of course without heat in the greenhouse, I’ll not have bananas, but it’s fun anyway. And yesterday and today I took my knitting out to the greenhouse and sat and knitted a bit. The weather in there is humid and warm like Hawaii. So pleasant.
Today was another beautiful day. We had a lovely walk in the park and worked on planting a few seeds. A bit difficult to see, but those are seedling trays I planted lettuce, several varieties of tomatoes, cabbage and will plant more in the next couple days. I need to plant lots of seeds, because I’m not great at getting seedlings started.
And just look at all the Swiss chard I picked that is still growing from last year. I will pick kale tomorrow.
Repositioned geese
One goose in particular would like to bite and stay attached to anyone entering his domain – meaning the back yard. Apparently this is why.
Buy why did she/they put them down the fence line and then move over to the garden to start a new nest? We absolutely cannot co-exist while she sets on the nest for a month. So if we are to have a garden this year, they must move.
They were moved and the eggs with them to the area where the bunnies lived this past winter. There is a very shady side (where I put the straw and eggs) and the sunnier side. It is a U shape and I’m guessing they will build a new nest on the sunny side. But if she gives up that’s okay with me as well. The main thing now is that we are once again safe and really they are safely enclosed as well.
Spring?
Just look at these flowers, so ready to burst with color. Spring must be very close. And the weeds are growing once again, another sign.
We have had more rain than I can remember at once. It has created a new pond.
In addition, though I can’t show you, we’ve been keeping our bedroom window open at night to hear the marvelous tree frog chorus. Interestingly, they stop instantly at the slightest sound or maybe movement. Though they are mostly down around the pond, they hear us open the window and everything stops. At other times, there much be an animal of some type go through there because again, they all stop as though they have a director.
I don’t know what is making these holes, but they have just showed up. Is it toads, mice, what? They have underground tunnels. They don’t seem to be disturbing anything. I noticed them this morning when I went out to put the slug bait down. And I did get the preplant fertilizer on as well. So maybe, hopefully, I will start some seeds, Sunday.
Sunday March 2 Gardening
Rain, rain, rain, and more rain. But I’d rather it than freezing cold and/or snow. And since we have a greenhouse, I spent part of the day in it listening to the rain on the plastic as I finished cleaning the beds (The aisles are nearly done, but will take another hour or so)
In December we had very windy freezing weather and the ends blew out of the greenhouse because they originally weren’t put on correctly. My banana trees froze. This is one of them. Do you know if they will revive?
This celery is coming back from stalks we already cut and used last summer.
There are still a number of greens growing. However it seems nothing kills Swiss chard, so a good bit of it went out and will be replaced with other vegetables.
I don’t know what this is, except it is some type of food. I had someone help plant last year and it has no label. It is growing great. Do you recognize it?
or this one?
Spring gardening in PNW.
Spring can’t be far away, can it? It was a beautiful day at 55 degrees with sun. And the daffodils are well on their way. Can this forecast for cold rain Saturday and possibly snow Sunday with a freezing low Saturday evening possibly be right?
I started in the greenhouse – which has no heat but is out of the wind and I’m about one-third of the way through the weeding. I’m hoping Sunday to get finished and get some seeds started.
